threegee

Not quite. It's Three that is marketing the phone and the service. The hardware is a freebie if you sign a monthly contract or £49.99 if you want one on PAYG. Heavily subsidised either way. You don't pay for the connection. How Three earn revenue is that to maintain the free connection to the Internet (and to Skype) you have to have paid a minimum top-up of your mobile in the previous month. Likely you'd be doing that anyway. Next launch will be Australia then Italy. Why it is significant is that it's the very first time that a telecom major has retreated from the cost-per-call model for other than local calls on their own network. There have been a few very limited harbingers that this was going to happen, but VoIP is what is known to economists as a "disruptive technology". In layman's terms: Directly paying for phone calls to wherever is a long-ingrained idea that is dead on its feet!

The point is that it builds on the existing telecoms infrastructure - to the vast majority of the World that isn't even Internet aware. Many commercial outfits are saving thousands on international calling using Skype, my own company included. This isn't possible using locked-in systems like MSN. And, who in their right mind would want to mortgage their future to Microsoft anyway! SkypeOut and SkypeIn undermine the existing telecom franchise to an extent Bill Gates could only dream about. But this is just the start, and there will be many more of the same. That was the entire point of my starting this thread. Mass use of VoIP is coming, and faster than anyone could believe. Skype isn't the only VoIP service in the field, but it has the highest profile. Extending the *free* use to mobiles is the breakthrough. The current near 10 million worldwide daily users will rapidly multiply. It's great to see that the UK has been selected for the initial roll-out.

Now this IS news! I use it several times a day to make international calls, and have done for almost a year. Skype Out may be what you are confused by. It enables you to call an ordinary phone in any country, most often for for far less than the cost of a local call. Both are fabulous services. Though the new 3 Skype mobile has to prove itself, it looks very promising, and really is free at the point of use.

In the USA comedian Steven Colbert announces his candidacy for president: http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/pl...p;is_large=true Which UK comedian would you like to nominate for British Prime Minister?

The Mail has now re-written their article to remove both the name, and the holier-than-thou stuff about the Internet. But they've added an open invitation to find out for yourself: Obviously a more experienced journalist at work here, and a better read. I believe the gender may already have been mentioned by the British press: yesterday - by the Daily Mail!

And now... someone has removed it! :D Censorship on Wikipedia? Is there a new year's honour at stake here? The plot thickens.

Skypezones, now free calls worldwide from your pocket. http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/allfeature...CFQOTMAodWXmyJw Watch Newsnight on BBC2 tonight.

And the Daily Mail is playing games too: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...70&ito=1595 Read the article and it's a simple process of elimination. If you are in any doubt they've almost spelled out the location. K.E.N..

Wikipedia has just added a paragraph to cover it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Frederick_Windsor The amusing bit is the quote from 1999: "It is very difficult to avoid getting into this sort of thing when you move in these circles.." Now which circles could he possibly mean? Surely not the Royal Family?!

Well, you've spelt it right! I hear there was a major conspiracy to deprive Bedlington of it's main-line railway station. The one Stevenson planned to build here. The hoi-paloi of the County diverted the main East Coast line through that stink-hole of Morpeth at huge extra cost, and so were forced to build Morpeth Station in a weird place on the other side of the river. Bedlington would have been a far larger place as a railway terminus for the coast line, not to mention the benefit to our local pits. So.. once again we wus robbed! Hanging ain't good enough for them toffs I say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/v...?ad=1&ct=50 A posting on Yahoo says: So.. if they hadn't issued a gagging order, and the whole thing had been in the open - like mere mortal's cases - it would have gone unnoticed, or at least have blown over by now. Wonder how much the whole charade cost the taxpayer?

Putting a gagging order on topical news is a "red rag" to the Internet.

Hmmm... to easy then with so much info available by simply Googling? OK, next week we are going to do it differently. Answers won't show until the weekend so everyone gets a fair chance. Everyone will get one point for a correct answer, and we will tot up weekly results each season to give four winners a year. The overall winner for the past four seasons will hold the Brain of Bedlington title (working title). Anyone with any questions with a local flavour please PM them to me. We need some topical/pop questions so's "old lags" won't have an unfair advantage. Thanks.

This week it's all about numbers: * Add the number of all the main roads joining (or running along) Bedlington Front Street. (e.g. A68 = 68, B2721 = 2721) No single road number to be added more than once. * From the above total subtract the year of the next (London) Olympic Games. * From the above result subtract the number of scan lines in an American (USA) TV picture. (UK system is of course 625 lines) * From the above result subtract the street number of The Grapes. The result is: ???? No posting part answers to help other people please. All your own work!

Close, but no cigar! The answer is Skype Zones Full list here: http://skypezones.boingo.com/search.html ----------------------------------- Standby for this week's quiz.

You've really got to spend some time playing to see how it works. But there's no worry about messing-up as you can re-edit as many times as you can be bothered. If you have tried and still have a problem PM me by clicking my name on one of my posts and selecting Send Message. Doing this for any user brings up the PM system in your own control panel with the person's name you want to contact already filled.

You've got 10MB of upload space here. If you need more simply PM. Some members already have 50MB or more. The attachments box is below the posting window, it tells you there how much space you have left. If there are problems then I need to know. If you need examples on how to do anything there's also [bB Code Help] button just below the posting window to the right. How to do most things in a post is pretty well illustrated there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7061603.stm Seems to me that Sir Al Aynsley-Green should return his obscene salary and/or resign. He's clearly out of touch with both public opinion and stark reality. Wonder how his own kids turned out, and if he practises what he preaches?

It's OK; we have the audacity - we can rebuild it! Better, faster, more cutting! It's now called Hometown but sadly I'm stuck for a rhyme with crack cocaine for the third verse! :D

On a lighter note [no pun intended]: There's room for a great song here (to the tune of Wheels on Fire). Bins on Fire Standing In Haigh Road Notify the W-D-C That Bin could Explode! --- Chorus: Run'n get the Fire Brigade... the Fire Brigade.. to put the Bins all out... Run'n get the Fire Brigade... the Fire Brigade.. the Bedlingtonians shout!

I believe Goebbels thought the same way!

Another clue: The SHOULD be able to answer this question at The Ridge Farm. But I'm not putting money on that!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=677124 http://forum.truckersworld.co.uk/viewtopic...2680fa2cdf05649 Give another ISP a try before you shoot the pianist. But first clear your browser cache and check there aren't local problems. Are you using broadband or dial-up? If you PM me I will show you how to find out where any congestion is.

Did read your earlier post, but last time I looked there was no law that says I had to reply to it! Where are these other complaints then? Server is very lightly loaded. Seldom running at about more than 10% CPU, so I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree. Yes, we could put the site on our UK machine to reduce the ping time a bit, but there are several reasons why not at present. If you've got a half decent transatlantic connection via your ISP, and everything else is equal, then the site has good performance. What you experience on the Internet is seldom what other people experience. Point me at a site that you *think* is faster to load and I will run some comparisons.

BBC News Item:- Former miners in damages victory